Surface Burner Testing:

In order to test the surface burner on your electric range, the following steps should be taken:

Before repairs or testing can begin you must disconnect the electricity at the fuse panel, at the circuit breaker panel, or by pulling the plug. Make sure the power is off before proceeding. A jolt from 220 volts can be fatal, use caution!

Remove the surface burner from the stovetop. On most electric ranges this can be done by pulling the burner up and out of its plug-in receptacle. Other models have the burner directly wired to the cooktop. To remove this type of burner, undo the screw that secures the burner to the cooktop, remove the clips that secure the insulators to the burner terminals, and carefully unscrew the wires from the terminals. Take care not to bend these terminals.

Visually inspect the burner - often there will be small holes or bubbles on the surface of a defective element.

Now that you have removed the burner, you can test it using your VOM. Using the ohmmeter function, set the range scale to R x 1 and touch the test leads to the two burner terminals. The VOM should show continuity. Typical burner readings should be somewhere between 19 and 115 ohms, depending on the range manufacturer. If there is no continuity, the burner is defective. To test for a grounded (or shorted) burner, place one test lead on the outside surface of the burner and the other test lead on each burner terminal in turn. If there is continuity at either terminal, the burner is defective.

If the burner is defective, replace with a new one by reversing the removal procedure (step 2 above). If replacing a wired-in burner, make sure that you install the wires on the correct terminals, according to the wiring diagram.